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Statistics I saw in an email...don't know if they are true

Statistics I saw in an email...don't know if they are true

Doctors:
(A) The number of doctors in the U.S. is 700,000.
(B) Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year are 120,000.
(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 17.14%.
Statistics: courtesy of the U. S. Dept of Health & Human Services

Guns:
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000.
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is 0.001875%.
Statistics: courtesy of the FBI

So statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners!

"Some people pride themselves on how far they can shoot ducks, others pride themselves on how close they can get them. I'm an other!!! "
John Stephens RNT

Doctors:
(A) The number of doctors in the U.S. is 700,000.
(B) Accidental deaths caused by physicians per year are 120,000.
(C) Accidental deaths per physician is 17.14%.
Statistics: courtesy of the U. S. Dept of Health & Human Services

Guns:
(A) The number of gun owners in the U.S. is 80,000,000.
(B) The number of accidental gun deaths per year, all age groups, is 1,500.
(C) The number of accidental deaths per gun owner is 0.001875%.
Statistics: courtesy of the FBI

So statistically, doctors are approximately 9,000 times more dangerous than gun owners!

Just post it as if it were factual. If it's not, the research department (Jeff) will let you know.

Summary of the eRumor: The forwarded email compares the rate of accidental deaths between physicians and gun owners and concludes that rate of accidental deaths per physician is much higher than the rate of accidental deaths per gun owner.The Truth: This email is obviously the humorous creation of a gun enthusiast.

We don't know when it was written but not all of the statistics appear accurate. According to the U.S. Department of Health Services there were about 780,000 licensed physicians in the United States in 2008, so that figure seems good.

Finding statistics that everybody agrees with regarding deaths caused by doctors is a little more difficult. Dr. J. Mercola released a book in 2000 titled Doctors are the Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Causing 250,000 Deaths Every Year. His breakdown, however, largely focuses on errors in hospitals and includes 12,000 deaths by unnecessary surgery, 7,000 due to medication errors in hospitals, 20,000 due to other errors in hospitals, 80,000 from infections in hospitals, and 106,000 from the negative effects of medications.

Regarding gun owners, figures from 2002-2001 from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives said there are 294 million gun owners in the U.S., a much higher figure that that quoted in the email.According to the National Rifle Association there were 776 accidental deaths from firearms in 2000, a lower figure than in the email.

That's all interesting to know but the premise of the email is weak and, as we said, mostly aimed toward humor. Comparing doctor deaths to accidental firearm deaths is meaningless, especially because doctors are dealing with people who are sick in the first place, some of whom are at high risk for death or have gone through high risk medical procedures.

Views and opinions expressed herein by Badbullgator do not necessarily represent the policies or position of RTF. RTF and all of it's subsidiaries can not be held liable for the off centered humor and politically incorrect comments of the author.
Corey Burke

Summary of the eRumor: The forwarded email compares the rate of accidental deaths between physicians and gun owners and concludes that rate of accidental deaths per physician is much higher than the rate of accidental deaths per gun owner.The Truth: This email is obviously the humorous creation of a gun enthusiast.

We don't know when it was written but not all of the statistics appear accurate. According to the U.S. Department of Health Services there were about 780,000 licensed physicians in the United States in 2008, so that figure seems good.

Finding statistics that everybody agrees with regarding deaths caused by doctors is a little more difficult. Dr. J. Mercola released a book in 2000 titled Doctors are the Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Causing 250,000 Deaths Every Year. His breakdown, however, largely focuses on errors in hospitals and includes 12,000 deaths by unnecessary surgery, 7,000 due to medication errors in hospitals, 20,000 due to other errors in hospitals, 80,000 from infections in hospitals, and 106,000 from the negative effects of medications.

Regarding gun owners, figures from 2002-2001 from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives said there are 294 million gun owners in the U.S., a much higher figure that that quoted in the email.According to the National Rifle Association there were 776 accidental deaths from firearms in 2000, a lower figure than in the email.

That's all interesting to know but the premise of the email is weak and, as we said, mostly aimed toward humor. Comparing doctor deaths to accidental firearm deaths is meaningless, especially because doctors are dealing with people who are sick in the first place, some of whom are at high risk for death or have gone through high risk medical procedures.

Corey and Jeff sitting in a tree, S-N-O-P-I-N-G!

Don't be doing Jeff's work for him, we are trying to keep him busy so he won't have time to send a check to Specter

Don't be doing Jeff's work for him, we are trying to keep him busy so he won't have time to send a check to Specter

Yeah but when you toss docs under the bus I gotta say something....
I will leave the rest to Jeff

BTW- we already proved snopes is bias and in the pocket of the libs and inaccurate.
much better is truthorfiction.com

Last edited by badbullgator; 05-05-2009 at 04:58 PM.

Views and opinions expressed herein by Badbullgator do not necessarily represent the policies or position of RTF. RTF and all of it's subsidiaries can not be held liable for the off centered humor and politically incorrect comments of the author.
Corey Burke

Summary of the eRumor: The forwarded email compares the rate of accidental deaths between physicians and gun owners and concludes that rate of accidental deaths per physician is much higher than the rate of accidental deaths per gun owner.The Truth: This email is obviously the humorous creation of a gun enthusiast.

We don't know when it was written but not all of the statistics appear accurate. According to the U.S. Department of Health Services there were about 780,000 licensed physicians in the United States in 2008, so that figure seems good.

Finding statistics that everybody agrees with regarding deaths caused by doctors is a little more difficult. Dr. J. Mercola released a book in 2000 titled Doctors are the Third Leading Cause of Death in the US, Causing 250,000 Deaths Every Year. His breakdown, however, largely focuses on errors in hospitals and includes 12,000 deaths by unnecessary surgery, 7,000 due to medication errors in hospitals, 20,000 due to other errors in hospitals, 80,000 from infections in hospitals, and 106,000 from the negative effects of medications.

Regarding gun owners, figures from 2002-2001 from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives said there are 294 million gun owners in the U.S., a much higher figure that that quoted in the email.According to the National Rifle Association there were 776 accidental deaths from firearms in 2000, a lower figure than in the email.

That's all interesting to know but the premise of the email is weak and, as we said, mostly aimed toward humor. Comparing doctor deaths to accidental firearm deaths is meaningless, especially because doctors are dealing with people who are sick in the first place, some of whom are at high risk for death or have gone through high risk medical procedures.

I won't blame this on Corey, but eRumor seems to be a little loose with its statistics. If there are 294 million gun owners in the US than we must have adopted a policy mandating ownership for everyone over the age of four since our total population is about 304 million. Also, saying that there are about 17% accidental deaths per physician is an interesting (not necessarily incorrect) way of looking at the math. There are, using the numbers in the email, 0.17 deaths per physician caused by medical error (most related to hospital errors, not physicians). I guess you could translate that to 17% of one person dying per physician as a result of medical errors.

Views and opinions expressed herein by Badbullgator do not necessarily represent the policies or position of RTF. RTF and all of it's subsidiaries can not be held liable for the off centered humor and politically incorrect comments of the author.
Corey Burke

I suspect the eRumor statistics came from the following article in 2000.

The JOURNAL of the AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION (JAMA) Vol 284, No 4, July 26th 2000 article written by Dr Barbara Starfield, MD, MPH, of the Johns Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health, shows that medical errors may be the third leading cause of death in the United States.

The report apparently shows there are 2,000 deaths/year from unnecessary surgery; 7000 deaths/year from medication errors in hospitals; 20,000 deaths/year from other errors in hospitals; 80,000 deaths/year from infections in hospitals; 106,000 deaths/year from non-error, adverse effects of medications - these total up to 225,000 deaths per year in the US from iatrogenic causes which ranks these deaths as the # 3 killer. Iatrogenic is a term used when a patient dies as a direct result of treatments by a physician, whether it is from misdiagnosis of the ailment or from adverse drug reactions used to treat the illness. (drug reactions are the most common cause).

Other estimates range around 40-100,000. However, these exclude deaths from "non-error, adverse effects of medications" since these are not in fact the product of errors (For example, I lost a dog to a minor infection because the dog was taking heavy doses of immuno-suppressants to deal with an autoimmune reaction. No error was involved.). It is also not appropriate to attribute the incidence of nosocomial infections (infections originating in the hospital) to physician error. These are the second leading cause of deaths attributed to medical errors.